MIT Professional Education Brings Lean Learning to Chile

The Lean Enterprise short program taught each summer on the MIT campus in Cambridge, MA has historically drawn strong international participation, but when the MIT Professional Education program was offered in Chile in October 2011, interest exploded. The 60 spots were quickly booked and overflow names filled a waiting list.

This LAI Lean Academy program, part of Professional Education’s expanding global outreach and its first program in South America, offered Chilean professionals something new—an opportunity to immerse themselves in the lean perspective through MIT’s signature hands-on education practices. It was a huge success.

Participants, who included senior managers and engineers from industries as diverse as mining, retail, and health care, uniformly praised the program. One commented, “It provides a good overview and practices of the fundamental concepts. It opened our minds so we can have a philosophy to take our companies to the next level.”

The three-day course focused on the anti-waste philosophy of lean manufacturing, articulated in the Toyota Production System and advanced in the 1990s to the enterprise level. The methodology has an ardent following in the auto and aerospace industries and, now, emerging interest from many other sectors. MIT has contributed to this thinking through its Lean Advancement Initiative (LAI) and programs such as the Educational Network (EdNet), an international group of more than 65 universities and colleges developing lean-related curricula.

Earll Murman, an MIT professor emeritus, led the short program along with Engineering Systems Division alumna Alexis Artery SM ’01, PhD ’06 and California Polytechnic State University Professor José Macedo.

“It’s a very robust curriculum with half the time spent on simulations,” says Murman, founding director of EdNet and former LAI co-director. “They had never seen anything like it. They were used to business conferences with lectures and case studies. The MIT style of active learning worked well over there.”

Professional Education’s growing presence in the world—with recent short programs in Japan, India, Singapore, Amsterdam, and Mexico—supports MIT’s mission to serve a global community.

“By offering educational programs in other countries, MIT can reach many more people than those who are able to come to Cambridge,” says Bhaskar Pant, executive director of MIT Professional Education. “Moreover, faculty are exposed to issues in emerging markets and that knowledge is incorporated into teaching for undergraduate and graduate students here. MIT Professional Education serves as a global portal connecting industry to MIT knowledge and expertise.”